Hurricane Drunk
by renrenren3
Summary: Castle tries to drown his sorrows in non-alcoholic fruit cocktails. It doesn't exactly go to plan.


Written for a song meme on Livejournal: bizarre_esque gave me the song _Hurricane Drunk_ by Florence and the Machine. This fic just grew to over 1,000 words by itself. I was going for sad and depressing but Castle doesn't do sad and depressing well. So it's kind of ridiculous, but we're talking about Richard Castle so I hope that's fine.

-x-

Martha Rodgers was very familiar with the phrase 'drama queen', it was almost one of the requisites for her profession, but sometimes she thought that nobody was a bigger drama queen than her son.

She wrapped her shawl tighter around herself and surveyed the mess in the kitchen. "Richard, what are you doing at two in the morning?"

He looked up from the table and wiped his hands on a towel. Martha noticed he was still wearing yesterday's clothes, and his shirt and tie had been badly stained with some sticky liquid. It would have bothered Martha, if Martha had been the one who did the laundry.

As it was, she pulled one of the chairs and sat down to get a better view of the mess her son was making with a bowl of fruit, a mixer and a couple of knives.

"It's some kind of mango and pomegranate juice," Richard said. "Want some?"

Martha peered at the contents of the glass pitcher he was holding up (yellow-green, with some red splotches that she assumed were the pomegranate seeds, though there were no pomegranates in sight) and shook her head. "No, thank you."

Richard wrinkled his nose and sniffed the juice. "No, it doesn't seem very drinkable," he agreed, though he still got himself a glass and ice cubes.

"So," Martha said when it became clear that Richard wasn't venturing anything more on his own. "Why are you making impromptu fruit cocktails at two in the morning?"

Not that Richard doing strange things at strange hours was strange, per se. The first time she'd come home to find her son throwing eggs at a dummy had been a bit of a shock but by now Martha was used to his particular brand of research.

She just couldn't see how mangoes could feature in one of his novels. Judging from Richard's disgusted face the fruit juice tasted awful but wasn't poisonous.

Richard twirled the liquid around in his glass for a while, then he suddenly got up and poured it all down the sink. The remainders of the ice cubes clinked against the metal surface.

"Actually my first idea was to go out and drink myself to death," he said, matter-of-factly. "But it was raining."

Martha nodded. The rain had started early in the evening, a real storm with wind and lightning and thunder. The perfect setting for a noir movie. It wasn't pouring quite so much now, but the soft patter against the windows didn't seem about to stop any time soon.

Richard had always hated going out in the rain, even as a kid. It made his hair fuzzy. "So I decided to drink myself to death indoors," he continued. "I stuck with non-alcoholic drinks because I didn't want to give Alexis a bad example."

"Very responsible of you," Martha said with a small smile. And then, because she couldn't hold back her curiosity any longer: "Did something happen with Beckett?"

Richard sighed and leaned against the fridge. "How very perspicacious of you, mother," he said. "How did you figure it out?"

"Oh!" Martha scoffed. "Darling, you're an open book to me. It's clear that this is about a woman, and I know it's not Gina because you don't have any book deadlines this month. Therefore: Kate Beckett."

That, and when she'd got home after having dinner with some friends Alexis had told her that Richard had returned from the precinct earlier than usual and had spent the evening staring at his phone.

Richard gave another, deeper sigh. "You're good at this detective business," he said. "Maybe I should start shadowing _you_ around instead."

He was aiming for a cheerful, airy tone, but as much as Martha loved her son she knew he'd always been a lousy actor.

"Did Beckett try to ban you from her investigations again?" she asked.

"No," he replied, glumly. There was more sighing. "It's just..."

"What?" Martha insisted.

"She had to leave early because she had a date," Richard replied. "With this annoying guy she's been seeing for a while," he added, staring intently at his feet. "He's a complete prat."

Martha knew better than to argue with that. "So she's seeing other men," she said, throwing her hands in the air. "It's not surprising, considering _someone else_ isn't making any move."

"What are you trying to imply, mother?" Richard said. "You know that me and Beckett have a purely professional relationship."

"Yes," Martha replied. "That might be the problem."

Now her son was _definitely_ pouting.

"Oh, don't make that face," Martha said. "It's hardly the end of the world."

"It is for me," he replied. "Hence the 'drinking myself to death' part. Which might have not exactly gone to plan, but I'll keep working on it."

Martha scoffed and got to her feet. "You should go to sleep instead," she said. "Or you'll be dead on your feet tomorrow. You're still going to do your... _research_ tomorrow too, right?"

Richard grimaced. "Yes, I suppose so," he said after a while. "I guess it wouldn't be nice of me to abandon her in the middle of a case."

Martha smiled. That was her boy. Totally full of himself, but his heart was in the right place even if his head never was. She leaned across the table and gave him a reassuring pat on the arm.

"By the way," he said just as she turned to leave. "I think this is the first time in thirty years that you've ever sent me to bed."

She stopped to think about it and then laughed. "I think you're right," she said. "Well, there's a first time for anything."

Maybe sooner or later he'd finally get a first date with Detective Beckett. She'd been waiting for months.

"Aren't you going to tell me to clean up after myself too?" Richard added, gesturing to the mess in the kitchen. Martha thought about it. The air was thick with the smell of fruit and some of the juice was congealing in a sticky puddle on the counter.

"I probably should," she said. "But do as you wish. Just make sure to get some sleep."

He smiled. "Good night, mother."

"Good night, Richard."


End file.
